article posted Dec 7, 07:57

There’s no question that the numbers are skewed (in terms of providing a meaningful snapshot of the actual market, assuming one’s interested in that) since the big “one quarter” figure applies only to ebooks, and only to kindle ebooks at that. Naturally, since kindle books are generally found on the Amazon site they form a substantial proportion of ebook sales at Amazon. D’uh. And the figures only concern the U.S. Moreover, when one takes overall book sales into account the picture is very different; it’s still dominated by big publishers.

All of that aside, however, the numbers are still kind of interesting. It’s a shift, a real one, whether on not it’s “seismic.” And it’s a shift in a world – publishing – that tends to change slowly.